The 6 best Instagram APIs in 2026, tested on 10 profiles

You've got a list of Instagram handles, maybe creators you want to vet, competitors you track, or brands a customer asked about. You want their follower counts, their last dozen posts with likes and captions, and what people are saying in the comments.

The official API won't give you most of that. So I sent the same 10 public profiles, from natgeo and nasa to patagonia, through two hosted APIs, and priced four more options from their own pages and docs.

Here's the list, then what came back.

The best Instagram APIs

• Instagram Platform for accounts that log in to your app
• Instagram Looter for a free tier and fast profile and post calls
• AnyAPI for profiles, posts, and comments with no monthly plan
• HikerAPI for the most Instagram endpoints
• ScrapeCreators for raw Instagram data and credits that never expire
• Apify for no-code runs billed per result

What makes a good Instagram API?

A good Instagram API can read the account you need, returns full post data and comments, and has a price per 1,000 calls you can predict. I'm assuming you're a developer pulling public data about accounts that never logged in to your app, in code, for a product, a report, or an AI agent. Here's what I compared them on:

• Whether it can read the account at all. Meta's API reads business and creator accounts only. A hosted API reads any public profile.
• Full post data in one call. Likes, comment counts, captions, and timestamps on every post, and a cursor for the next page.
• Comments. The text of what people wrote, not only the count.
• What 1,000 lookups cost, and whether you pay per call, per result, or per month.

The best Instagram APIs at a glance

Six Instagram APIs compared on who each suits, its price on September 30, 2026, and what happened when I ran it:

Here's what came back from the two I ran, on the same 10 profiles:

Best Instagram API for accounts that log in to your app

Instagram Platform

Instagram Platform pros:

• Free, from Meta, with no scraping involved
• Publishing, comment moderation, and insights for accounts that connect to your app
• Business Discovery reads follower counts, post counts, and per-post likes and comment counts for other business and creator accounts

Instagram Platform cons:

• Can't read personal accounts at all
• Comment text only on posts the connected account owns
• Needs your own business or creator account and a Facebook login token with three permissions

Instagram Platform is the answer if you're building a scheduler or an analytics dashboard for businesses and creators who log in with their Instagram account, and you can stop reading. Meta's API is free and it's the only option here that can publish posts.

It stops at other people's accounts. Meta's overview of the Instagram API with Facebook Login says it can't access consumer accounts, meaning anything that isn't a business or creator account.

The closest thing to a lookup is Business Discovery, which you run from your own business or creator account with a username to look up. It returns that account's follower and post counts and each post's like and comment counts, with three permissions: instagram_basic, instagram_manage_insights, and pages_read_engagement. It skips age-gated business accounts, and comment text is only readable on media your connected account created, 50 comments per query.

So if your list has creators on personal accounts, or you need what people wrote in the comments, you need one of the options below.

Instagram Platform pricing: free

Best Instagram API for a free tier and fast profile and post calls

Instagram Looter

Instagram Looter pros:

• 150 free calls a month on the Basic plan, with a hard limit, so you can't go over
• Fastest pages of posts in my run, a 3.3-second median
• Full post data: likes, comment counts, captions, and timestamps on all 113 posts

Instagram Looter cons:

• No comments endpoint
• The posts endpoint takes a numeric user ID, so a list of handles costs two calls per account
• Said 0 posts for natgeo and airbnb

Instagram Looter is a RapidAPI listing, so you subscribe through RapidAPI and send your RapidAPI key in a header. The profile call takes a username. The list of posts takes the numeric ID from that profile, which means a handle is always two calls if you want its posts.

Both calls were quick and complete. Follower counts matched AnyAPI's to within 48 on every account, and every post had its likes, comment count, caption, and timestamp. Two of the 10 profiles came back in a thinner shape that reported 0 posts for accounts with thousands of them.

The pages are big. A page of 12 posts ran from 121 KB to 737 KB, and every plan includes 10,240 MB (10 GB) of bandwidth a month before a charge of $0.001 per MB, according to its pricing page. The endpoint takes a fields parameter to trim the response, so use it before you run anything at volume.

If you only need profiles and posts, Instagram Looter is the cheapest per call here at a steady volume. The $9.90 Pro plan works out to $0.66 per 1,000 calls if you use all 15,000. Skip it if you need comments.

Instagram Looter pricing: Basic free for 150 calls a month; Pro $9.90 a month for 15,000; Ultra $27.90 a month for 75,000, then $0.001 a call; Mega $75.90 a month for 250,000, then $0.0005 a call; 10 GB of bandwidth a month on every plan, then $0.001 per MB

Best Instagram API for profiles, posts, and comments with no monthly plan

AnyAPI

AnyAPI pros:

• Comments came back on 9 of 10 newest posts, 123 in all, and the 10th post had none
• One call per handle for a page of posts, with no user ID lookup first
• No plan, no minimum, and nothing that expires; the price is on each endpoint's page before you call it

AnyAPI cons:

• Pages of posts and comments were slow in my run, about 17 and 16 seconds at the median
• The profile's post count came back empty on all 10 accounts
• The post with no comments came back as not found and was still charged

AnyAPI sells each Instagram job as its own endpoint and charges per call from a prepaid wallet. A profile is $0.001, a page of posts is $0.0008, and a page of comments is $0.0008. Every one of them takes the handle or the post URL you already have.

It was the only API I ran that returned comments. Each page held up to 15, with the author, text, likes, and timestamp, and a cursor for the next page. Eight of the 123 had an empty text field.

The post count is the gap to plan around. A natgeo profile call rerun in the playground came back with 268,481,086 followers and posts: null, the same empty post count as all 10 accounts in the test.

The speed was the weak spot. Profiles came back in about a second, but a page of posts took 17 seconds at the median, against 3.3 seconds on Instagram Looter. AnyAPI's Instagram endpoint pages listed 30-day medians of 2.8 seconds for posts and 4.8 for comments on September 30, 2026, so my run was slower than usual, and a nightly job won't notice either way. A request that waits on a user will.

A page of 12 posts works out to $0.066667 per 1,000 posts, against Apify's $2.70 on its free plan. The line against Instagram Looter's Pro plan is about 10,000 profile lookups a month. Below it, paying per call costs less than Looter's monthly plan. Above it, the flat plan wins, as long as you don't need comments.

AnyAPI pricing: $1.00 per 1,000 profiles, $0.80 per 1,000 pages of posts, and $0.80 per 1,000 pages of comments, pay as you go from a prepaid wallet; up to $18.00 per 1,000 comment pages when the cheapest source can't answer and a dearer one does. New accounts get $0.10 of credit.

Best Instagram API for the most Instagram endpoints

HikerAPI

HikerAPI pros:

• More than 100 Instagram endpoints, including stories, highlights, followers, likes, and public email and phone where an account lists them
• $1.00 per 1,000 calls once your balance reaches $100, locked in for life
• Server errors are free

HikerAPI cons:

• $0.02 a call until your balance reaches $100, twenty times the rate above it
• A 404 is billed, so a list of dead handles costs money
• The 100 free calls need a Telegram account

HikerAPI does Instagram and nothing else, and it goes deeper than anything else here. Most endpoints cost one call; stories, highlights, and follower pages cost two, and stories or highlights looked up by username cost three.

The price is a ladder you climb by prepaying, set out on HikerAPI's pricing page. Top up $20 and you pay $0.02 a call. Reach $100 and you can select the $0.001 rate, and it stays yours even after you spend the balance down. Reach $300 and it's $0.00069, and $599 gets $0.0006. If you'll spend $100 on Instagram data anyway, it's a fair price for the depth. If you're testing with $20, you're paying twenty times more.

I didn't run it for this page, so I can't tell you how it did on these 10 accounts.

HikerAPI pricing: 100 free calls; $0.02 a call from a $20 balance; $0.001 from $100; $0.00069 from $300; $0.0006 from $599; the balance never expires

Best Instagram API for raw Instagram data and credits that never expire

ScrapeCreators

ScrapeCreators pros:

• Profile, posts, comments, comment replies, reels, highlights, and transcripts, with Instagram's own field names
• Credits never expire, and cached results cost nothing
• 100 free credits with no card, plus up to 7,000 more to claim

ScrapeCreators cons:

• $1.88 per 1,000 calls on the $47 pack, and $0.99 only after a $497 purchase
• Instagram's raw shape means your code parses Instagram's field names

ScrapeCreators covers Instagram alongside TikTok, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, Reddit, and more, with one key and one credit balance. Most endpoints cost one credit, so the per-1,000 price is the pack price. A profile comes back in Instagram's own structure, with fields like edge_followed_by for followers, per its profile docs.

It's the pick if you'd rather have everything Instagram returned and decide later what to keep, and if your volume is uneven enough that a monthly plan would go unused. I didn't run it for this comparison.

ScrapeCreators pricing: 100 free credits; $47 for 25,000 credits ($1.88 per 1,000); $497 for 500,000 ($0.99 per 1,000); custom above 1 million; most endpoints cost one credit

Best Instagram API for no-code runs billed per result

Apify

Apify pros:

• Separate scrapers for profiles, posts, and comments, run from a web console with a CSV export
• $5 of free credit every month on the free plan
• Lower per-result prices on paid plans, from $1.60 per 1,000 profiles

Apify cons:

• Billed per result, so 1,000 posts is 1,000 results, not 84 pages
• Three separate scrapers for profiles, posts, and comments

Apify's own Instagram scrapers are the route if the person who needs the data doesn't write code. You paste handles into a form, run it, and download a spreadsheet.

The billing unit is the thing to check. The Instagram Profile Scraper charges $2.60 per 1,000 profiles on the free plan, more per profile than AnyAPI, Instagram Looter, or ScrapeCreators. The Instagram Post Scraper charges $2.70 per 1,000 posts, and a per-call API returns 12 posts a call, so a page of posts costs more here. The Instagram Comment Scraper is $2.30 per 1,000 comments. Five dollars of free credit covers nearly 2,000 profiles a month.

Apify pricing: free plan with $5 of credit a month; $2.60 per 1,000 profiles, $2.70 per 1,000 posts, and $2.30 per 1,000 comments on the free plan; $2.30 per 1,000 profiles or posts on the $29-a-month Starter plan

Which Instagram API should you use?

The right Instagram API depends on whose account you're reading and whether you need comments:

• Business or creator accounts log in to your app, or you only need a business account's counts: Instagram Platform.
• You want to try it free today: Instagram Looter's 150 free calls a month.
• Profiles and posts only, at a steady 10,000 calls a month or more: Instagram Looter on a monthly plan, with fields set.
• You need comments, or your volume goes up and down: AnyAPI, paid per call.
• You need stories, followers, or likers and will spend $100 on Instagram data: HikerAPI.
• You want Instagram's raw response and credits that don't expire: ScrapeCreators.
• The person running it doesn't code: Apify.

Frequently asked questions

Does Instagram have a public API?

Yes, but only for accounts that log in to your app. Meta's Instagram Platform is free, and its docs (read September 30, 2026) say it can't access consumer accounts, meaning any account that isn't a business or creator account. For other business and creator accounts, its Business Discovery call returns follower, post, like, and comment counts, not comment text.

Is there a free Instagram API?

Meta's Instagram Platform is free for accounts that log in to your app. For other public profiles, the free options on September 30, 2026 were Instagram Looter's Basic plan at 150 calls a month, ScrapeCreators' 100 free credits, HikerAPI's 100 free calls (a Telegram account is required), and Apify's $5 of free credit a month.

Can I get Instagram comments through an API?

Meta's API returns comment text only on posts the connected account created, up to 50 comments per query. Of the two hosted APIs run on the same 10 profiles on September 30, 2026, AnyAPI returned 123 comments on 9 of the 10 newest posts (the 10th had none) at $0.80 per 1,000 pages of comments, and Instagram Looter has no comments endpoint.

How much does an Instagram API cost per 1,000 profiles?

On September 30, 2026: Instagram Looter $0.66 if you use all 15,000 calls of its $9.90 Pro plan, AnyAPI $1.00 with no plan, HikerAPI $1.00 once your balance reaches $100, ScrapeCreators $1.88 on its $47 pack, and Apify $2.60 on its free plan. Meta's Instagram Platform is free for accounts that log in to your app.

Why does an Instagram API return 0 or null for the post count?

Both hosted APIs tested on September 30, 2026 got it wrong on some accounts: AnyAPI's profile call left the post count empty (null) on all 10, and Instagram Looter said 0 posts for natgeo and airbnb, which have thousands. Count posts from the posts endpoint instead of trusting the profile's number.

Instagram's own access rules for every platform are in the social media API pricing guide, and the Instagram endpoints page lists every call with its live price.

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